


Vacations Aren't Relaxing

by yeehaw7



Series: tumblr requests [3]
Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: M/M, haha haven't written in a while
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 13:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20436554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeehaw7/pseuds/yeehaw7
Summary: another one-shot request from tumblr (hmu @ariatorulethemall)prompt: a oneshot where they go on holiday abroad for the first time and its utter chaos





	Vacations Aren't Relaxing

**Author's Note:**

> i kinda disappeared for a while sorry lol it's the School and Mental Health doing it to me

"Have you got the tickets?" 

"Have I… Yeah, I think so."

Henry turned to Ted, an incredulous look plastered on his face. "You _think_ so??" 

"Well, there's a chance I left them at home."

Henry gestured frantically to the airport around them, the screens that were now announcing that their flight was boarding and the group of people queuing to get onto the very same flight they had booked online a month ago. "And what use to us are they there? How can you forget plane tickets?" 

Ted shrugged. "To be fair, I barely remembered my suitcase so I don't know why you trusted me with the tickets."

Henry rolled his eyes and slumped back into his seat, then grimaced as his bare arm touched a wad of gum stuck to the back of the armrest. Ted finished his rummaging in his backpack and stood up, slapping his pockets like a frantic father looking for his keys so he could take his one-too-many children to school. Henry watched the line go down with every passing second, and just as he was about to give up and call off the entire vacation, he heard Ted give a triumphant shout. "Here they are!" 

Henry stood up and gathered his shit quickly, already moving towards the rapidly decreasing queue. "C'mon then! We're going to miss it!" 

Later, while reflecting, Henry wished that this was the only disaster or near-disaster that occurred on the trip. Unfortunately, that was not the case. 

Upon landing 3 hours later, they were immediately robbed by the taxi driver they hired to take them to their hotel. In hindsight, it was a little dodgy that the driver insisted that he had to stay inside the cab while they put their luggage in the trunk, and that when they reached for the handles, the doors were locked, but at the time, they were too socially awkward to object. 

Not wanting to risk another robbery (not that there was anything left to steal besides their wallets and the clothes on their backs), they walked the five hour long walk from the airport to their hotel. 

But it wasn’t smooth sailing from there, either. 

It took an hour to sort out the room key as the receptionist didn’t speak fluent English and Henry’s phone (containing a translation app) had been in the front pocket of the backpack that got stolen. It took half of that hour to convince the receptionist to give them the wifi password and another half an hour for Ted to download the app on the unbelievably shitty wifi. By the time the receptionist finally understood and apologised profusely in broken English, it was dark outside and the pair, jetlagged and hungry, were more than ready to just flop straight into bed and forget the entire disaster. 

However, the universe didn’t seem to agree with that plan. 

Ted went to have a shower, only to have the handle fall off while he was turning it and the shower head to explode. In a matter of seconds, the water was flowing out of the shower and onto the wooden bathroom floor, and then under the door into the bedroom. 

It took another half an hour to explain to the after-hours lady on the hotel phone that their room was currently flooding and ask if it was possible to switch to another. They did get switched - but the banging of the 24hr repair man in their old room a couple doors down was so loud that neither of them got a wink of sleep. 

Breakfast, thankfully, was a much less harrowing ordeal as it included free food and coffee. Both of the men had three cups each, hoping to wear away their exhaustion with caffeine alone. Amazingly, it worked, and they headed out to replace their stolen belongings with a day on the town before their city tour later that evening. 

This time, they took a train instead of a taxi, and arrived at the nearest mall with no robbery involved, although there was a very small, very yappy dog sitting on a woman’s lap next to Ted the entire way. 

Each trip into each shop could be summarised into something like this;

Ted, pointing at whatever took his fancy: Hey look, Hen!  
Henry: no.   
Ted: aw.   
Henry: we don’t need it.   
Ted: are you sure?  
Henry: 100%  
Ted: are you sure you’re sure?  
Henry: completely.   
Ted: we just lost some stuff, we can replace the empty space in our house with that!  
Henry: if you applied that logic to everything you saw, we’d have to hire a storage unit and you well know that we can’t afford that after what your credit card’s about to go through.   
Ted: okay fair

In the end, they only ended up with one extra object: a porcelain duck painted in neon pink and yellow. Ted couldn’t believe that Henry had let it slide and refused to carry it in a bag, instead nestling it in his elbow and carrying it around like a new-born baby. 

They arrived back at the hotel just in time to dump their stuff onto their bed and scarf down a quick dinner downstairs before heading out again, this time in infinitely cleaner clothes than they’d spent the last 24 hours in. 

The tour was relatively uneventful, if you could ignore Ted spilling his pocketful of spare change onto the deck of a skyscraper and scrambling to pick it up before it slipped through the cracks and tumbled down a couple hundred stories. There were upsides, however - the guide let them stay back for five minutes to pick up the change and they shared a kiss under the moonlight, drinking in each other’s presence and the lit up buildings around them. They were _definitely_ later than 5 minutes when they met back up with the main group at the bottom and _perhaps_ Henry’s hair was a little more ruffled than it had been before, but they continued as if nothing had happened, ignoring the glares from the guide of the now-late-for-their-next-destination tour group. 

They arrived back at their hotel at around 10pm and headed straight for bed, the caffeine from earlier in the day now worn off. If you asked the people in the surrounding rooms, they’d say they hadn’t even heard the springs of the mattress squeak before snoring with the decibel level resembling that of a lion’s roar emanated from room 105. 

Ted woke when his phone buzzed underneath his pillow, sending vibrations through to his head. He blinked blearily, momentarily forgetting where he was, before turning over and shoving Henry excitedly. 

“Good God, Ted,” Henry mumbled. “Let a man get some sleep.” 

Ted chuckled and shoved Henry again, then snatched the blankets away, resulting in the older man rolling off the bed as he had nothing to hold on to. A muffled groan sounded from the floor and Ted chuckled again, before heading to the bathroom for a shower. 

Henry, however, remained with his face planted to the carpet for several minutes, attempting to find the mental energy to pull himself to his feet. By the time he did, Ted was already out of the shower and dressed, so the pair headed down to breakfast. 

“What do you want to do today?” Ted asked, half a slice of toast in his mouth. 

Henry closed his eyes in exasperation, took a deep breath and a sip of coffee before responding. “Not sure. Maybe we could wander around?”

“Sounds good to me,” Ted replied, although his response was so muffled from the sheer amount of food in his mouth that it sounded like unintelligible grunts. 

Henry sighed, then drained his coffee. 

Their day progressed peacefully after Ted had demolished all the food in sight, for once, not a single thing going south.

The next morning was an entirely different story.

The pair woke up late, Ted’s phone having deleted the alarm in some fit of technical error. To say it was a mad rush was an underestimation, to be frank, it’s not likely that there is a phrase to explain the feeling of pure panic the two men were under. In short; the suitcases weren’t so much packed as stuffed, and the pair weren’t so much leaving as making a mad dash to the airport.

Traffic was as congested as the nose of a 3 year old with a sinus infection so needless to say, Henry was anxious. At some point during the trip Ted had stopped him from tapping his foot on the seat in front of him, the driver having sent several ugly glares back at them. He wasn’t ready to have to deal with one of Henry’s mental meltdowns and having to catch another taxi on the middle of the highway at the same time. 

After what seemed like several years, they arrived at the airport. They’d texted each other the details on the way over: one of them would stay in the car and pay the driver, slowly, while the other went round to the trunk and removed their belongings. They didn’t want to risk another robbery. 

Suitcases safely in hand, they headed towards their gate. Amazingly, they weren’t late by anything more than five minutes and boarded their plane with no real difficulties.   
It was only when the pair arrived safely home a few hours later that Henry could take a deep breath and relax. 

“We’re never going on holiday again,” he muttered, collapsing face first onto the couch, intending to stay there for several hours, hoping that a nap would erase the last couple days and their stress from his memory. 

Ted just grinned and pulled up his calendar on his phone. “Good thing I’ve booked one for next month then, huh?”


End file.
